Stop listening to Twitter/X shills, fren.
While you were busy chasing the next 100x memecoin, the real war for blockchain dominance was being fought on-chain. Forget narratives; we are following the money and the users. The data shows a clear split. Some chains are winning the user war with sheer volume, while others are quietly becoming the settlement layer for serious capital.
Here’s the breakdown of who’s actually winning, based on the metrics that matter.
The user onslaught: Who’s got the crowd?
BNB: Buying users, and it’s working.
BNB Chain is crushing it in raw activity, posting 16.24 million daily transactions and about 2.33 million DAU as of September 2025. This comes from aggressive campaigns, such as the Gas-Free Carnival, which subsidized fees and made a clear push to trade short-term revenue for long-term user growth.
Solana: Still the retail King.
Solana continues to dominate as the go-to for consumer apps and high-frequency trading, pulling in close to 3 million DAU. Non-vote transactions now range between 60 million and 90 million a day. Its ecosystem runs on a powerful flywheel where memecoins and games onboard users, who then feed liquidity into DeFi and DePIN.
The L2s are here.
Ethereum’s L2s, especially Base, are exploding. Base now pushes up to 14.48 million daily transactions and nearly 1 million DAU, often surpassing Ethereum’s L1 in raw transaction activity. This validates Ethereum’s L2-centric roadmap, where the mainnet steadily shifts into a pure security and settlement layer.
Ethereum: The settlement Layer.
Ethereum’s mainnet processes around 1.59 million daily transactions as of late September 2025, with daily active addresses between half a million and seven hundred thousand. While the L2s handle most of the user noise, Ethereum L1 remains the anchor for high-value settlement, RWAs, and institutional flows.
Blockchain | Daily Active Users (DAU) | Daily Transactions | Key Driver |
BNB | 2.33M | 16.24M | Incentivized campaigns, low fees |
Solana | 3.0M | 60M–90M (non-vote) | Consumer apps, DePIN, memecoins |
Base | 0.95M | 14.48M | L2 scaling, USDC hub |
Ethereum | 0.5M–0.7M | 1.59M | High-value settlement, RWAs |
Follow the money: Where value is moving
Users are one thing, but value is another. DEX volumes and stablecoin flows show where the real economic weight is.
High-frequency trading floors.
BNB and Solana consistently sit at the top in DEX activity. On busy days, Solana processes around $3.6B in DEX trades, while PancakeSwap on BNB alone clears above $3B. Their cheap and high-speed environments make them the perfect arena for active traders and bots.
Ethereum: The institutional settlement Layer.
Ethereum remains where serious money settles. Tokenized RWAs total roughly $15–30B, depending on methodology, and BlackRock’s BUIDL fund on Ethereum has already grown past $2.9B. The combination of RWAs and institutional products reinforces Ethereum’s role as a global financial ledger.
Base: The stablecoin superhighway.
Base has posted spikes that put it at the top of stablecoin transfer flows, driven largely by USDC. Leadership rotates between Base, Ethereum, Tron, and Solana depending on the day, but Base has shown it can grab the crown. That cements its place as critical infrastructure for the digital dollar economy.
The Alpha: What does this all mean
The takeaway is simple. The one chain to rule them all thesis is dead. The market is splitting into distinct categories:
High-volume retail chains (BNB, Solana): Optimized for speed and low cost, capturing the majority of daily users, gaming, and high-frequency trading.
High-value settlement Layers (Ethereum): Focused on security and decentralization, trusted for RWAs, institutional flows, and as the anchor for its L2s.
The play isn’t to bet on a single killer. The alpha is in knowing which chain is winning which race.
Bitcoin dropped below $115,000, with other top cryptos like ETH, XRP, ADA, and HYPE also trading lower. The market downturn appears to be driven by investors reacting to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s recent 0.25% interest rate cut, with expectations of further cuts ahead. Despite the broader sell-off, a few altcoins such as IP, AVAX, and BNB have managed to post gains.
Weekly price movement:
BTC $112,776 ⏬ 2.97% (7d)
ETH $4,198 ⏬ 9.38% (7d)
IP $14.04 ⏫ 45.4% (7d)
AVAX $30.82 ⏫ 3.97% (7d)
BNB $1,023 ⏫ 10.24% (7d)
(All data here as of 1:00 p.m., 22 September 2025)
Before we conclude, here’s a quick look at some important news from around the crypto world.
The first exchange-traded funds (ETFs) offering exposure to XRP and Dogecoin started trading in the US on September 18. Products offered by Rex Shares and Osprey Funds are listed on the Cboe BZX Exchange under the tickers DOJE and XRPR, following the Rex-Osprey Solana ETF, which debuted in July. DOJE will differ slightly from similar products for the other tokens, however, in that it will not hold DOGE directly. The REX-Osprey XRP ETF, listed on Cboe under the ticker XRPR, registered a trading volume of $37.7 million, marking the largest debut volume of any ETF launch this year, according to CoinDesk.
Google is taking a step toward merging artificial intelligence (AI) and digital money, rolling out a new open-source protocol that lets AI applications send and receive payments, which includes support for stablecoins, digital tokens pegged to fiat currencies such as the US dollar, according to a release. To incorporate stablecoin rails, Google teamed up with US-based crypto exchange Coinbase, which has been developing its own AI-integrated payments infrastructure, according to CoinDesk.
That’s it for now. Thanks for sticking around.
See you later, folks! 👋